The Goings & Comings of Ant! (Social Recruitment)

I’m outta here!

So, after 3 1/2 years at Trinity I’ve spent the last month weighing up the pro’s and con’s of a great new opportunity and decided that the time and the place and the opportunity are right.

So I’m leaving the great people at Trinity at the end of September.

I’m joining Andrew Woodward (Microsoft SharePoint MVP, Owner & CEO) and James Fisk (CTO) at 21apps as Chief Strategy Officer next month.

21apps is a relaxed, high quality, deep thinking company that enjoys what it does, which is provide companies with the experience, techniques, tools and knowledge to deliver the maximum value from their people, solutions and services.

As an organisation we are currently focussed on adding business value through shared understanding, agile practices, leveraging our deep technical knowledge in the Microsoft stack (in particular SharePoint) to help deliver this value and working with the community to share our knowledge and passion.

21apps also embark on product development that solve real business issues and deliver value like 21scrum which was developed to provide a simple, easy to use, integrated scrum tool that meant companies could do SCRUM without the overhead/waste in using/learning complex products.

I am so excited to be joining Andrew, James and 21apps it’s a scary move going from a 250 strong  Gold Partner to a 3-person SharePoint start-up, but it is absolutely the best thing I could have done at this point in my life.. The opportunities are immense, challenging and just freakin’ awesome!

Interesting (for me) the whole “recruitment” process took a month and was executed completely with Social Media tools (Twitter, blogs & Linkedin) and personal communications both face to face and on the phone.

No CV, no interviews… It all started with just a single Tweet:

AndrewWoody: Fancy working with me and @draken ?http://www.21apps.com/jobs/weneedyou/

The Zen Encyclopaedia of Presentation Design

So in the light in such mediocrity, one of the key ways that I see we can excel and become the Linchpin in our own right is through the way we present our thoughts and ideas, whether this is in an informal conversational setting or formally with PowerPoint and mic’s and all that paraphernalia.

So I read Garr Reynolds first book Presentation Zen and loved it, it’s simplicity is infectious, it’s impact on me was phenomenal, I rediscovered what it means to deliver ideas, my interview for a past role was completely transformed, I read, learnt and gambled for the death of the bullet point and the re-incarnation of the story-teller… So I was very very curious as to what Garr could write about presentations next; the first book being pretty awesome around the simplistic, but highly effective techniques you can employ to deliver your message.

But Garr has succeeded, this next book is centred around the design principles you can utilise around, amongst a plethora of other things:

• Colour
• Fonts
• Imagery
• Transitions
• Articulation of messages
• Photography

I learnt a shed-load from the book, you really should go buy this book (and the one before it):

But, his last book you could read & learn, embed those take-away messages into your psyche and then rock-up at your next opportunity to present ideas with some awesome innovation and techniques to make you rock…This book is different.

This book does absolutely, through the great style of writing and the emphasis of simplicity, deliver messages subliminally to your “art” of presenting, but there is so much more detail and technique in PresentationZen Design that it’s not the sort of book that gets read and popped onto the shelf or leant out to your colleagues, you need to keep this book by your side, dip in to refresh your mind or to replay the lessons or deck ideas brilliantly laid out within its pages. This book is your:

Zen Encyclopaedia of Presentation Design

If you are passionate about improving your presenting skills and the quality of your decks then go buy this book now please… for me, for your audience, for your message?

The Fear of the Linchpin

So I bought from iTunes Seth Godin’s latest creation from iTunes a a few weeks ago.. The audio book comes in two parts and during some of my commutes and occasionally at home I’ve been dipping into it and slowly working my way through the 8 hours or so of audio..

I like Seth, he has a great deal of interesting, challenging stuff to say… his voice works well in audio books (maybe he has a face for radio?). This book is another well thought out insight/self-help/business/innovation book, or piece of art as he may call it.

But I started to not enjoy it.. it wasn’t that he wasn’t making sense, ‘cus he was.. but he did seem to be banging on about “factories”, I’ve never worked in a factory, but my parents have, so although I can see it’s relevant, for some reason it feels distant and I didn’t connect. I found that lack of connection, for an undeterminable reason all the way through the first half of the audio book; I still learnt a bunch of stuff, I still got some of what he said, but the power and the connection wasn’t necessarily there..

But the second half…

Wow, Seth really started switching on some lightbulbs for me, that showed some scary insights into me and you and our behaviours that reinforce or work against us being the “linchpin”.

Disclaimer:- I haven’t actually finished listening to the book yet!

Stuff around a 2nd voice in our heads was fairly standard stuff, but the focus on fear stopping us from being freakin’ awesome and becoming a linchpin and developing a network of linchpin’s around us was extremely interesting. The leadership strands, seem to strengthen as the audio book progresses and I’m not sure whether this is because Seth get’s better at writing, kinda gets into his stride, or that I’m just learning in the first half and putting the relevance into play in the second… but persevere please, it’s worth it…

3 things stuck out on my way to and from a client meeting today listening to Seth..

1. Fear -  Don’t be scared, things fail, people fail, failure is good.. learn from this, don’t stress, focus on (as Seth says) shipping getting things done, delivering
2. Stop Checking In - In order to succeed, in order to become a linchpin stop wasting time through the day checking-in periodically (email, Twitter, LinkedIn, intranet, colleagues etc) use that time to be awesome, to deliver, to “ship stuff” & to make a difference
3. Gift – Give things, knowledge, gifts, books, time or whatever with no thought to reciprocation

So I spent some focussed time this afternoon culling my inbox… I didn’t get to “Inbox Zero”, but I did get down to only 6 unread emails. (Stopped Checking In)

I shipped stuff… No fear, no pause, delivering this blog post, reviewed a draft RFP response, a manifesto and agenda for a clients IT Steering Group, an agenda for a SharePoint 2010 Organisational Readiness session all done, efficiently this afternoon and this evening (Fear)

And finally, as I’d discussed previously with Matt Groves previously, I thought I’d buy a book, a gift for my colleagues at Trinity; so a copy of Seth’s Linchpin is slowly making its way to the office for you to read, borrow, discuss or ignore (Gift)

So, I’ve got a day’s leave tomorrow to spend with my daughter on her birthday, but Friday and all next week

• I’m not gonna let fear define what I do,
• I’m gonna focus on shipping stuff and not a stack of spinning plates
• I’m gonna give..

That’s all, simple, effective and movement towards my personal vision.